Yesterday's coverage of the Erin Andrews trial was even worse than last week when I wrote about how gross the leering coverage had become.
At one point during Monday's proceedings, a video of the deposition with Andrews' stalker, Michael David Barrett, was played for the court prompting Andrews to walk out. How do I know this? Because Fox 17's Eric Alvarez saw fit to tweet video of her walking out of the courtroom. Unable to watch a video of her stalker describing how he stalked and surreptitiously filmed her naked, Andrews left the courtroom — and was met with reporters who decided to film her and post the video on the Internet. I suppose it's easy to imagine the awful irony here not occur to a reporter in the moment, but we are in the second week of this sort of coverage. Is no one thinking about what they're doing?
But yesterday's coverage of the trial was bothersome for another reason. During her testimony, Andrews said ESPN — her employer at the time — forced her to do an interview about the incident before she could return to her job. But you wouldn't know that detail from reading the local stories on the trial yesterday.
After the jump, a transcript of that part of Andrews' testimony from Deadspin:
Q: So did ESPN require that you give an interview?Yes. Because there wasn’t an arrest, because we didn’t know where this happened, my bosses at ESPN told me, “before you go back on air for college football we need you to give a sit-down interview.” And that was the only way I was going to be allowed back.
Q: Now, you did have the right to select who that interview would be done by, right?
I did. They were highly recommending it be GMA [Good Morning America], because ESPN and ABC are the same, and they wanted it on GMA. But like my dad had said the other day, I didn’t want it to be a two second thing where it’s like, “Was this a scandal, or, was it not?” No, this is my life, and I feel terrible about myself, and we want to figure out how this happened. So, I didn’t want to do it, I didn’t want to be a part of it, and I just said, you know what, “I know because she’s very public about it, Oprah is a crime victim.” I talked to her producers, I told her I didn’t want to do it. But this was the only way I was going to be put back on air, so we went to the Oprah show.
This story is about the various ways a woman was victimized and this bit of testimony shows how she was victimized again by her employer, which not only made her go on television to clear up the fact that she was actually a victim, but tried to turn it into a ratings boon for a sister network. It would be ideal if the local media covering the trial did their best not to contribute to this pattern of mistreatment. And if we're going to get wall-to-wall coverage of the trial, it's bizarre that this bit of testimony was overlooked in the stories produced at the end of the day yesterday.
While tweeting the testimony, The Tennessean's Stacy Barchenger noted Andrews' testimony about ESPN making her do the interview. But her story for the paper — an otherwise fine recap of the day in court — makes no mention of it [See update below]. Stories from WSMV and Fox 17 also overlooked it, focusing instead on the fact that Andrews became emotional during her testimony.
To be fair, trying to sum up an entire day in court can be more difficult than plucking out a detail from afar. But that gets right to the point. This is largely not a local story — save for the behavior of the hotel, which as far as I can tell hasn't been the focus of any local coverage — and yet it is being covered from dawn to dusk. Would it not be better to back off a bit and be sure not to miss the most newsworthy bits amidst the salacious details and images of the victim crying?
As reported by Barchenger, Andrews also testified yesterday that “this trial has obviously brought everything back. This is like it was the first week it happened. I knew it was going to happen.”
Knowing that, to repeat: The media should treat her more like a victim and less like a target. Andrews is obviously a very public, famous person. But if this incident had happened to an average citizen who is not a celebrity, how would the media treat that person? Perhaps the answer to that question would also be troubling, but one hopes it would be much more thoughtful. Given that, surely there's a middle ground. Something between pretending she can be anonymous and contributing to the pattern of victimization.
Update (5:10 p.m.): The Tennessean just published this good story regarding Andrews' testimony about ESPN forcing her to do an interview on the incident. It also includes a statement from ESPN.
